This invention relates to packet telephony in general and, more particularly, provides a way of increasing reliability of and extending network management and operations to end devices for packet telephony.
Packet telephony involves the use of a packet network, such as the Internet or an xe2x80x9cintranetxe2x80x9d (modeled in functionality based upon the Internet and used by a companies locally or internally) for telecommunicating voice, pictures, moving images and multimedia (e.g., voice and pictures) content. Instead of a pair of telephones connected by switched telephone lines, however, packet telephony typically involves the use of a xe2x80x9cpacket phonexe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cInternet phonexe2x80x9d at one or both ends of the telephony link, with the information transferred over a packet network using packet switching techniques. A xe2x80x9cpacket phonexe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cInternet phonexe2x80x9d typically includes a personal computer (PC) running application software for implementing packetized transmission of audio signals over a packet network (such as the Internet); in addition, the PC-based configuration of a packet or Internet phone typically includes additional hardware devices, such as a microphone, speakers and a sound card, which are plugged or incorporated into the PC.
Furthermore, packet telephony includes a broad spectrum of media or signal types. Whereas the plain old telephone service (POTS) networks have primarily been concerned with sound (and, over the last several years, data) transmission, packet telephony includesxe2x80x94in addition to voice/dataxe2x80x94pictures or images, moving pictures, and multimedia content. Incorporating the capability of handling multimedia content increases the complexity of end devices for packet telephony.
Regular telephone devices used with POTS networks are simple, highly reliable devices. Users typically do not tamper with them during the life of the telephone. The reliability of regular telephones is limited only by the manufacturing process.
In contrast, devices used for packet telephony, such as PC-based packet phones, are dynamically-configured machines, with operation controlled (and resources allocated) in part by one or more executable software programs, And much more complex in their operation with higher hardware failure rates. In addition, PCs used for packet phones are not dedicated telephony devices, so the reliability of a PC-based packet phone may well be limited by other applications that may run on the PC; for example, a crash caused by any other application that renders the PC inoperative (i.e., the computer is xe2x80x9chungxe2x80x9d) would also render the PC-based packet phone inoperative. While some PC products contain as a feature the ability of a PC to wake up, receive a phone call and go back to sleep, such a feature requires an operational PC; if the PC has crashed, the xe2x80x9cwake upxe2x80x9d phone call feature will be rendered inoperable.
While consumers have become accustomed to failures in computers and PC equipment, they have not been accustomed to failures in their telephones; in fact, consumers have become accustomed to a highly reliable, ubiquitous telephone service that has been available for years through POTS. The shift in telephony from POTS networks and telephones to packet networks and PC-based packet telephony devices, thus, brings about the need for increased reliability in packet telephony devices.
What is desired is a practical way to improve the reliability of packet telephony devices, such as a PC-based packet phone, so that the reliability of network communications through packet telephony approaches the reliability of POTS telephony.
An illustrative embodiment of the present invention is directed to a control device operationally coupled to both a packet telephony device (such as a PC-based packet phone) and a communications network (e.g., telephone network or packet network). The control device may have its own network address separate from that of the packet telephony device. The control device enables monitoring of the operation of the packet telephony device and basic maintenance, such as rebooting of that device if it is no longer responding to input commands.